Political Behavior Exam 1

What is science an attempt to do?

Understand part of the empirical world by discovering the principles governing its behavior and showing how they do so

What is the empirical world?

Tangible and measurable

The scientific method can also be described as..

The systematic testing of empirically falsifiable hypotheses 

Science as a marketplace

theories are developed and hypothesis are developed. Ideas are used and expanded on

What is a positive correlation?

Two variables move in the same direction, showing there is a relationship

Ex: If political interest increases, voting will increase

What is the range of correlation

-1 to 1

• -1 is a perfect negative correlation

• 0 is no correlation

• 1 is a perfect positive correlation

How are they reported?

Example r = .70 (p <.1)

• R is the correlation coefficient

• .70 means strong positive correlation

• P < .1 tells statistical significance (ex: statistically significant at the 10% level

A → B Variance

A change in A causes a change in B

Ex: Having political interest makes you vote

B -→ A

Ex: Voting makes you have political interest

A ← → B

A and B can influence each other, maybe it is to see which one is stronger

The direction is unclear but there is a relationship

A ← C → B

No direct relationship between A and B but they are both influenced by C

• spurious relationship = misleading/deceptive

• ex: political participation ← education → political knowledge

• ex: murder rate and ice cream consumption

What are the 2 main research methods in political behavior

1. Data

2. Surveys

What type of correlation can experiments rule out?

Spurious

What are the benefits and limitations of conducting experiments?

Benefits

• gives more leverage

• Prove causation and rule out spurious correlations

Limitations

• expensive

• external and internal validity

• you can not exactly replicate certain conditions such as war

• time

Issues with measurements

Sometimes they do not accurately represent properties

For example: asking if someone has a degree does not prove that they are fully educated

Define Validity

the measure measures only what it is supposed to measure

• hard to establish

• more important than reliability

Define Reliability

the measure produces consistent results across repeated trials

What is a regression analysis

statistical method used to examine how one variable is releated to another variable and how changes in variables are associated with one another

What is OLS regression (Ordinary Least Squares regression)

Finds the line that best fits the data

There are a lot of people represented as dots on a graph an OLS line gets as close as possible to all those dots

• dots are people

• Y is the depedent variable and X is independent

• the line shows if they are negatively or positively correlated

What is citizen competence?

The idea that a citizen has the knowledge, skills, and ability to understand politics and make informed decisions

What do citizen competence models look like?

Vote (input) → policymakers (process) → policy (output)

Citizens ← → interest groups ← → policy workers → policy

• citizens influence decisions and policy

• why competence and understanding is valuable

• citizens and policy are connected by feedback

• citizens and policymakers are connected by parties and media

Why would we want a system of inputs and outputs and how does citizen competence help?

• Good policy formulation and governance

• Advancement of personal interests

• Higher-quality input

• Better chance that ideas are tested

• Resistance to manipulation

Factors that help competence

• helpful motivation-related factors

• helpful ability-related factors such as knowledge and cognitive ability

Factors that harm competence

Harmful motivation-related factors such as demotivation

Harmful ability-related factors such as strength of partisan attachmens

Kuklinski and Quirk on Basketball

Used basketball as an analogy to establish that we need to clearly establish and define a task, criteria, indicator, and standard

Model: task → defense in basketball

lcriteria → blocks

Indicator → numerical amount of blocks

standard → relative placement, such as what part of the league you are in

Rebounds are necessary and sufficient- can you be a good defensive player while being bad at securing rebounds? (criteria is necessary; sufficiency is how well the criteria speaks to the task)

If there are multiple criteria there are multiple indicators

K and Q on research errors and solutions

• Research often does not include all steps, and a successful experiment explicitly defines them

• need to clearly state what competence means before it can be measured

• improvements: specify tasks that speak to citizen competence, use objective measures

• maximize accuracy and stamp out systemic error

What do K and Q find about belief systems

• a coherent belief system means someone’s different political opinions are consistent with one another (do citizens have organized belief systems)

• People have found different definitions and measures of what counts as a coherent belief system

• You can not say someone is competent or not without clearly defining what competence is and determine how you measure it

• Information and motivation interact

• a good informational environment can improvement judgements

Philip Converse Goal

Show that citizen competence is lacking and that most people do not have a consistent view of politics; issues do not match, and the stands they take are inconsistent with their ideologies

What ideological structure did Converse study?

Liberal-conservative ideologies

top-level organizing structures principle

Explain the vertical model for Converse vs Hurwitz

Converse: top organizing force is ideology, values are in the middle, and individual specific policies are at the bottom

• this fell apart because he went top up

Hurtwitz: tested the vertical model vertically not just at the base

• there was a top-down structure

What were the research methods Converse employed?

Open-ended questions to discuss contemporary politics to assess whether they brought up ideology and how it was connected

• most people did not talk about ideology

• but the longer people were to talk the more likely they were to bring it up

• people might structure there views in a particular way without directly mentioning it

Then he compared the mass public to elites

What was Converse’s best evidence?

He compares people’s options when he asks them the same issue multiple times

Time1 to Time3 correlation is the same

Showed that there are consistent answers but non-attitude people picked randomly

Where did Converse fall short?

• he did not test a vertical mode

• he did not see if ideology is correlated with policy positions

• verbosity

What did Converse conclude?

Democracy is doomed because people are too random to function as compitent citizens

What did Alford and Funk Study?

Twin studies to compare biology to political attitudes

Asked: Are people born with genetic predispositions

Hypothesized: political attitudes and behaviors are connected to genetics

Compared identical twins to fraternal twins

What Alford and Funk found

• Biology and genetics may influence political behaviors and attitudes

• Nature and nurture go together

• Genetics does not strongly correlate with party identification

Alford and Funk explanations (3)

1. Shared environment

2. Unshared environment

3. Genetic influence

Importance of Alford and Funk

we can not understand political behavior if we do not understand the origins

Distinguish between MZ and DZ twins

MZ = monozygotic (identical)

DZ = dizygotic (fraternal)

What does the ACE model stand for

A = additive genetic (how much variation comes from biology)

C = common environment (how much variation comes from the same environment

E - unshared environment (how much was from the twins living apart

Explain the mathematics for ACE

A = genetics

A - 2(rMZ-rDz)

2(.60-.40) = .40 → 40% is attributed to genetic differences

E = 1-rMZ → 1-.60=.40 → 40% makes twins different

C= 1.(A+E) → C=1-(.40 + .40) C -.20 → 20% is attributed to things twins share

What is heritability

Tells us how much variation in ideology across the population is based on genetic differences

What did Funk not answer

• existence of heritability does not tell us how or why

• Are ACE models too simple

(Mis)Understands the Other Side How Americans Explain Opposing Political Views method and research question

Mixed-methods research

Question: How and how well do Americans answer when asked to explain their own political views and opposing viewpoints

(Mis)Understands how were they assessed?

Quantitatively and then estimating a statistical model to correlate better or worse performance

(Mis)Understands Findings (3)

1. Democrats and Republicans have different issue agendas

• the sides tend to ignore each other rather than reason when debating

2. People are bad at explaining their own views

3. People are even worse at explaining views they oppose

What is a post hoc explanation?

An explanation made after seeing the results rather than predicting it beforehand

What is democratic citizen competence?

Represents the extent to which individuals possess the skills neccesary to effectively pursue their self-interest through political engagement that do not infringe on the opportunities of other citizens to pursue their own self-interest through political actions

5 Criteria in Profs approach to K & Q

1. Fact opinion differentiation

• reduce misinformation

2. Identification of false claims

3. Historical recollection

4. Understanding of opposing views

What does John Stuart Mill say about opposing viewpoints?

If we can not refute the opposing side we have no ground for preferring either option

What is panel data?

Survey the ame people at multople points in time to get the average attitudes

• strongest evidence is if they are the same

How does biology influence political behavior?

Indirectly through traits like personality- not single genes directly

More influential in a general sense rather than one specific gene

Why are single genes unlikely to explain political behavior?

Most many traits involve many genes plus environmental factors

Genes evolved long before modern political ideologies and institutions existed

Explain the proposed biology to politics pathway

Biology influences personality/traits which influences political attitudes and behavior

Explain reverse causality for biology

Political experiences and behavior could influence personality, not just the reverse

What are the big 5 personality traits

1. openness - willingness to explore new ideas

2. conscientiousness - self-discipline and organization

3. extraversion

4. agreeableness

5. emotional stability

In Mondak’s studies how is openness related to ideology and engagement

Higher openness is associated with more liberal identification

More openness is associated with higher political engagement

In Mondak’s studies how is conscientiousness related to ideology and engagement

Higher conscientiousness is associated with more conservative identification

Engagement is dependent on how the individual views the importance, they have to believe it matters

How does extraversion impact participation?

More likely to participate in protests or outgoing forms of political participation

What did Mondak find in his studies?

The Big Five does seem to have notable impacts on political behaviors

Biology influences political behaviors to some degree but also is still influenced by environmental factors

What is meant by trait x situation interaction?

a trait’s effect on behavior changes situationally